Red Bull has denied rumours it is preparing to drop its appeal against Daniel Ricciardo's Melbourne disqualification.

The story goes that FIA president Jean Todt, angry with world champion Sebastian Vettel's crass dismissal of the new turbo V6 engine rules as "shit", was offering to drop a disrepute charge if Red Bull agrees to drop the appeal.

"Utter nonsense," Dr Helmut Marko is quoted by Germany's Sky.

"I have no idea where that came from. We are preparing for the appeal hearing," he insisted.

Team boss Christian Horner on Monday denied that the FIA had even contacted Red Bull about Vettel's swearing.

But when asked about the incident, Todt said: "It is something we will deal with internally.

"Unfortunately we have a tendancy to forget the beauty of motor racing and formula one and concentrate on behaviours that are not my priority," he is quoted by French television BFMTV.

Even with the appeal hearing looming, arguably Red Bull's bigger priority is the performance of its Renault-powered RB10, and the deficit to dominant Mercedes.

Horner is expecting a tough weekend in Bahrain.

"Their (Mercedes') advantage will be bigger than it was (in Malaysia) because it's quite a power dominated circuit," he said.

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